Pretty Til It's Not

After stopping by the beacon park to practice our rescue skills, we took a look at surface conditions and the upper snowpack around Canyon Creek. Boy, the weak layers that are growing.

• Of future concern: Above the 1/13 crust there is generally 1-5" of snow, and up to a foot on typically wind-loaded, northeast-facing slopes. Most of the snow above the crust consists of persistent weak layers. There are near-surface facets above the crust which are topped with a layer of surface hoar. All of that is capped with either 1/2-1" of soft loose snow, or a very thin, fragile crust on sunny aspects. So we have 2 out of 3 ingredients for future slab avalanches, a bed surface and a weak layer. We will continue to track these weak layers until new snow begins to fall.
• We also found 1-3" of soft snow on windward slopes. This is worth noting because the wind may pick up again later this week and it's good to know how much snow it has to work with.
• As for the current persistent slab problem: We found a layer of surface hoar buried about 2 feet below the surface. We tested this layer at 6700' on a northeast aspect and got mixed results - sudden planar small column results, but no propagation in an extended column test. At that elevation, we still had to cut through the thick, hard 1/13 crust to affect the buried surface hoar. We got no whumpfing and no shooting cracks as we traveled over the snow. Where the 1/13 crust is hard and supportive it is unlikely that a rider can collapse this buried weak layer.

We skied lower angled, sheltered, northwest facing slopes and found great, soft snow above the crust and quality riding. We found steep, southwest facing terrain where the crust was thick and supportive, and the slopes were planar. We skied it one at a time. The skiing wasn't nearly as good as the low-angled pow.